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She took one more step forward, then another—and laid her hand in his.

Harry inhaled a long, controlled breath as his fingers closed firmly around hers. His hands were large, rougher than she’d expected, but gentle.

He drew her close, then stepped back and bowed. She dropped a quick curtsy.

“What is the dance, sir?” she asked.

In reply, he softly whistled the opening bars of a popular country dance. Mariah almost laughed at herself, for thinking he would propose something intimate like the waltz. A country dance was almost respectable. She fell in step with him and danced the simple steps.

There were no other couples, so they simply repeated the steps others would have performed. Neither spoke, but every time their hands touched—their bare hands—she felt a shock that went straight to her heart. His were not the hands of a gentleman, not soft or plump, but then she knew he wasn’t like other gentlemen.

She could also sense that something was wrong. Their other conversations had all been light and teasing. Tonight the darkness she had always sensed in him was at the fore, even in this dance. His fingers lingered on hers. She could feel his eyes on her as they turned about each other; and more than once their shoulders brushed, at his doing she was sure. He could indeed dance, but she no longer cared about that.

At the next turn she went the wrong way deliberately, facing him just as he stepped toward her instead of promenading around his back. They both stopped cold, no more than a few inches separating them.

“What happened tonight?” she whispered, straining to see his face. “What has changed you?”

He loomed over her, dark and silent. “A girl,” he said at last, his voice flat and yet heavy with emotion at the same time. “She couldn’t be more than fifteen years old.”

“What happened to her?”

“I gave her a crown and sent her home.”

He hadn’t answered her question. Carefully, she laid her hand on his arm. He inhaled sharply but didn’t pull away. “What else could you have done?”

“She doesn’t need a crown,” he said, and Mariah realized what the emotion was: anger. He was boiling with it. “She needs a proper place to live and decent clothes and an honest living that doesn’t require her to sell herself to a gentleman gone slumming for the night. He only paid her a shilling and then took her up against a brick wall in an alley reeking of shit.” The anger was slipping into his voice, sharpening his words. “I could hear her crying, and then he didn’t even pay her the second shilling he had promised, but walked away without a care⁠—”

No one had ever spoken to Mariah of such things before. She supposed she ought to be shocked and offended at such crude speech, but was too horrified by what he described. “Where?” she asked. “Where is she? Perhaps I can help⁠—”

He laughed, a harsh bark of bitterness. “Of course you can’t. I probably couldn’t find her again if I tried. She might not even survive the night, out on the streets of Whitechapel.”

“I would like to try,” Mariah insisted, truthfully. She couldn’t even imagine a life like that. Who would not want to help such a poor creature, starving and cold and abused? She could take clothing and food, blankets; even money. Papa gave her enough pin money, she could spare some for a girl in need. “I can help, Harry.”

“Would you? How?” He stepped back, spreading his arms wide. “Sell your furnishings? Give her your silk gowns?”

“No... Not that, but warm clothes, and a hamper from the kitchens⁠—”

“Feeding her a meal or giving her a warm cloak won’t help. That won’t change the facts of her situation. She’s poor and young and already ruined. What would a meal do for her, when she’ll be hungry again tomorrow?” He swept one hand through the air as if flinging something away. “Your offer is kindly meant, but it isn’t enough. No one person can help. It requires all men, and women, of decency to stand up for her. How noble can a man be if he allows people to starve to death a few streets from his own home and never makes the slightest effort to prevent their suffering? Your father cares for you and your health, but does he even know what other young women in London endure?”

“I—I don’t understand,” she stammered, startled by his fury. “Why were you in Whitechapel? Are—Are you a reformer, Harry?”

He was silent. His shoulders fell. “No,” he said at last, as if the anger and animation had all drained away, leaving only hollow weariness. He turned away and hung his head. “I’m nothing.”

Mariah moved without thinking. She stepped forward and put her hands on his back, then rested her cheek against him, too. He was so strong and solid, so warm through the soft linen of his shirt. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, despite the smell of him. Where had he been tonight, and what had he been doing? Why had he watched a gentleman engage a prostitute in the squalor he described if it disturbed him so?

But he cared; he cared for the discomfort of a street girl he would never see again, and he gave her a crown. “You are not nothing, not to me,” she whispered.

He turned. Mariah stared up into his face, only dimly visible even at this close distance. She realized it didn’t matter what he looked like anymore. She would know him anywhere, from the way he moved and the way he breathed and the way he laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that, when you offered to help.”

“I would help her, Harry, truly.”

“I know.” His hands came up. His fingertips whispered over her jaw.

“And... I admire you for caring, when many men would not care about a girl like that.”

“Don’t admire me,” he murmured.